Celebs, Uri Geller and magic tricks

[Barry Shnikov]

Now that I can accept, but if that's what he meant, maybe BS needed to word his statement a little more specifically?

um...no, but maybe you needed to read it more carefully.

I made a statement about Uri Geller, and specifically restricted it to Uri Geller.

Really? So Magicians don't claim to make the "lady" disappear with magic then? I would've classed that as a lie & a deception. and Entertainers doing the old "cup and ball" trick don't cheat?

There is an unspoken contract - nowadays - between 'magicians' and their audience. We expect them to amaze us by apparently doing things that are impossible, or by doing things that are apparently impossible. We expect them to do it well.

It is no longer true that magicians claim to be doing something supernatural.

Therefore a magic act - even (though he is a bore) David Blaine's - is not a 'deception'. Nobody is deceived. We all - except for the youngest children - know that if we have a certain dexterity and some patience we can learn to do these things, though perhaps not as proficiently.

Uri Geller does not say 'See, I bent the spoon. You never saw me use force on it, so how did I do it? Mm-hmm - it's spooky, isn't it?" He says "ever since I was a little boy I have had supernatural powers - look, how I use the power of my mind to bend spoons - you can do it too!"

Please tell me you see the difference.

[straycat]

Therefore a magic act - even (though he is a bore) David Blaine's - is not a 'deception'.

Actually - I disagree about Mr Blaine, but in a different way. Example: his 'levitation' trick on one of his DVDs, which looks pretty inexplicable... the trick to it is that when he performs it on the street, in front of yon public, he does a fairly-easy-to-explain trick that can look quite freaky if it's done really well (which, doubtless, it is)

And then - when the audience is gone, he and the film crew return with a hoist to film something which looks a whole lot more impressive. Then, with a little judicious video editing, the DVD audience is misled into thinking the live audience is reacting to something that looks quite impossible. Instead of what the live audience actually saw...

So what he is actually doing is claiming that he can perform an illusion which, in fact, he cannot perform. 'Bit like Mr Copperfield claiming he can make jumbo jets disappear, come to think....

[Gav]

um...no, but maybe you needed to read it more carefully.

I made a statement about Uri Geller, and specifically restricted it to Uri Geller.

Yes, of course, but this was before you answered my initial question which this all hinged on and led to the argument about your assumed meaning.

There is an unspoken contract - nowadays - between 'magicians' and their audience.

Please tell me you see the difference.

So if the contract is unspoken, is it written? or is it just thought? I've never heard of any such contract and isn't it a huge assumption that everyone will know what you're talking about if it's based on a contract in your head?

[Barry Shnikov]

Er, no, I didn't.

He's been caught on camera - when he thought he was unobserved - bending cutlery against the edge of the table and then claiming that he did it with his mind.

I've just googled 'Geller caught in the act' and I got a lot of stuff but here at work I can't review the clips so I can't see which one it is.

It takes a lot of pure muscle to bend a spoon or a knife - just try it! - so he puts it on the edge of a table (IIRC) and leans on the protruding end. The guests and audience have been distracted and their attention is elsewhere - he needs less than a second and then he's hiding the fact that the spoon is already bent (just wrote 'boon is spent' - oops!) and gradually revealing it so that it appears to be gradually bending.

It's the sort of trick that a competent sleight of hander will see as beneath his notice, which is why Geller is not a great magician, like Penn & Teller. Far more profitable to claim to be a spoon bender who is not a magician, as he has demonstrated.

He's a multi-millionaire, by the way (which you probably cannot even say about David Copperfield, though he's undoubtedly rich) and that is because we as a species are unrelievedly gullible, and he is a charlatan.

[Barry Shnikov]

So if the contract is unspoken, is it written? or is it just thought? I've never heard of any such contract and isn't it a huge assumption that everyone will know what you're talking about if it's based on a contract in your head?

It works in pretty much the same way as the contract which is formed when you go in to Boots and buy some shampoo.

Nobody sits and spells out the contract in any detail but we all know pretty much what it says.

[Lynn]

Uri Geller was on a local chat show years ago. He sent out thought waves through the TV and viewers were to phone in with any unusual happenings. Several did and this was reported later in the show.

One report was from friends who said their wind up music box that was sitting on the TV started playing by itself... of course they made it up!

(The funny part is that about a year later one sent this in to Radio 1 'True Confessions' , it got read out, a local journalist picked it up for an article and word got back to the local TV chat show host who was not amused!)

[Double Trouble]

Did anyone see Uri on 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here'? He said he was sending brain waves to Michael Jackson on his Birthday & that Michael was recieving the messages and thanking him blah, blah, blah. The problem was he got the wrong dateSeems Michael was telling him what a great Birthday he was having, a day early.:rofl

[Gav]

It works in pretty much the same way as the contract which is formed when you go in to Boots and buy some shampoo.

Nobody sits and spells out the contract in any detail but we all know pretty much what it says.

Surely that's consumer rights isn't it? I think that's fairly well documented.

[Dreadful Scathe]

Therefore a magic act - even (though he is a bore) David Blaine's - is not a 'deception'. Nobody is deceived.

Well I would say Blaine is a separate case because he certainly seems to give off the impression that HE thinks he's got super powers of some sort, whether normal people are deceived or not.

I don't know if its true but I heard he regularly got stuff thrown at his box when he was suspended off tower bridge. It certainly SHOULD be true

[Barry Shnikov]

Surely that's consumer rights isn't it? I think that's fairly well documented.

Yes, the SOGA and SOGASA and later European provisions apply to the transaction but how many people have even read them, let alone know what they say?

I'm simply making the point that the parties to the transaction act as if they understand the nature of the transaction, even though it isn't written down.

So the magician doesn't say 'actually, I don't claim any supernatural powers but look - I can saw a woman in half - see her feet wiggling? - and put her back together again. How do you explain that!', but we know he is there to mystify and entertain us and not send us away wondering if he has found a way to harness quantum chromodynamics and spiritualism to turn the assistant's midriff into ectoplasm and send it the eighth dimension and back.

[Gav]

Yes, the SOGA and SOGASA and later European provisions apply to the transaction but how many people have even read them, let alone know what they say?

I'm simply making the point that the parties to the transaction act as if they understand the nature of the transaction, even though it isn't written down.

So the magician doesn't say 'actually, I don't claim any supernatural powers but look - I can saw a woman in half - see her feet wiggling? - and put her back together again. How do you explain that!', but we know he is there to mystify and entertain us and not send us away wondering if he has found a way to harness quantum chromodynamics and spiritualism to turn the assistant's midriff into ectoplasm and send it the eighth dimension and back.

My point is that a consumer can go and look up the relevant written information.
If a Magician's contract is in his head, how is the audience supposed to know it even exists, let alone it's content?

[Barry Shnikov]

Actually - I disagree about Mr Blaine, but in a different way. Example: his 'levitation' trick on one of his DVDs, which looks pretty inexplicable... the trick to it is that when he performs it on the street, in front of yon public, he does a fairly-easy-to-explain trick that can look quite freaky if it's done really well (which, doubtless, it is)

And then - when the audience is gone, he and the film crew return with a hoist to film something which looks a whole lot more impressive. Then, with a little judicious video editing, the DVD audience is misled into thinking the live audience is reacting to something that looks quite impossible. Instead of what the live audience actually saw...

So what he is actually doing is claiming that he can perform an illusion which, in fact, he cannot perform. 'Bit like Mr Copperfield claiming he can make jumbo jets disappear, come to think....

I'd forgotten about the accusation that Blaine does one trick and then broadcasts a slightly different one; I might agree that that is a species of cheating but it's not very gross. But the fact remains that he makes no claims other than being an entertainer; arguably - if we aren't savvy enough to suss that Blaine is using camera tricks, just because most other magicians boast that they do not - then he isn't so much a cheat as just more manipulative than other magicians.

Penn & Teller did a trick in London where they drove a truck over Teller's chest.

Then they did the tell and showed a) the truck was unloaded b) there were enormous counterweights on the other side of the truck from the camera, pulling almost all the weight onto the offside wheels, and finally the tyres that actually ran over Teller were merely empty foam rubber, so that there was no weight on him at all.

I knew it was a trick, but I had not realised that the trick involved using the fact that it was TV, and they could control the camera, and I didn't mind when they told me.

I sort of suspect that if Blaine did the same thing - that is, explained that he did a so-so levitation trick to get the punters gasping, and then came back and did it again to fool the TV audience, I might well have just said - "Oh, very clever!! You sneaky bugger!" but I agree, finding out from other sources makes it seem more deceitful.

[Barry Shnikov]

My point is that a consumer can go and look up the relevant written information.
If a Magician's contract is in his head, how is the audience supposed to know it even exists, let alone it's content?

I think you must have been a terrier in a previous life.

Not all analogies work point-for-point-for-point. I tried to explain that I am simply using the word 'contract' as a way of explaining that both sides know what is going on even though it is never explicitly set out. Probably 95% of all contracts are like that.

It could be argued that just as the parties to a contract of sale can go and look at the statutory provisions to satisfy themselves of what the contract is, so a particular theatre goer could contact the magician and say "As I understand it, you are not claiming real magical powers, rather that it's the speed-of-the-hand deceiving-the-eye? Is that correct?"

To go onto the front foot, do you disagree? Do you believe that any adults of sound mind go to see a magician or watch a magic show on television believing that some supernatural powers are being exercised? Or do you accept that we know it's trickery and the magician knows that we know it's trickery and that his job is to do his damnedest to makes sure we don't spot the trick?

[straycat]

I knew it was a trick, but I had not realised that the trick involved using the fact that it was TV, and they could control the camera, and I didn't mind when they told me.

I love Penn & Teller's take on things - and the refreshing honesty they have about the tricks behind what they do, which applies right up 'till the moment the pull the rug out from under your feet with something that completely defies their previous explanations.... genius)

I sort of suspect that if Blaine did the same thing - that is, explained that he did a so-so levitation trick to get the punters gasping, and then came back and did it again to fool the TV audience, I might well have just said - "Oh, very clever!! You sneaky bugger!" but I agree, finding out from other sources makes it seem more deceitful.

[straycat]

For a nice sidetrack: here's the Penn & Teller truck trick.

[Barry Shnikov]

Couldn't find the clip I've seen before, when Geller uses the edge of a table; but to the first of four clips in which James Randi takes us through footage of Geller's performance and then goes through it again showing you where he does the cheat.

[SteveK]

Well I would say Blaine is a separate case because he certainly seems to give off the impression that HE thinks he's got super powers of some sort, whether normal people are deceived or not.

I don't know if its true but I heard he regularly got stuff thrown at his box when he was suspended off tower bridge. It certainly SHOULD be true

He definitely got lot of eggs and chips chucked at him; apparently there had to be quite a few security guards employed to protect him in his box. BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Blaine may have to pay police cost It's interesting how the british behaviour was different to the more deferential Americans; it makes a change anyway!

Even Paul MacCartney came along to join the fun - I recall from reading copies of The Sun lying around the site cabins where I used to work that Paul MacCartney went along one evening to shout abuse at Blaine....

[stewart38]

No they don't - they are very upfront about the fact that they perform spectator friendly "tricks". Uri on the other hand claims paranormal abilities and has even attempted to sue magicians who have attempted to show how his "abilities" can be accomplished by slight of hand and other tricks.


edit: except as said by Stray - David "New Messiah" Blaine...

Uri got my grand father clock to work 20 odd yrs ago it hadnt worked for 5/6yrs before that . Was one of his TV 'tricks'. maybe a co-incidence but ill never forget it

[Dreadful Scathe]

Uri got my grand father clock to work 20 odd yrs ago it hadnt worked for 5/6yrs before that . Was one of his TV 'tricks'. maybe a co-incidence but ill never forget it

you know you're right - i stand corrected and i believe all his claims now

[stewart38]

you know you're right - i stand corrected and i believe all his claims now

Don’t get me wrong I don’t think uri has any more powers then me but sometimes things like that ‘co-incidences’ just cant be explained


Like why do old people always win the lottery etc